On Day One the anchorman’s son crowned me the prettiest and smartest girl in the troop and in the entire regional scout group. But we were not of the same class, and in the future I would tell him that with full sincerity and sass, because alas, I was from a class of poor artists and he was of the TV news brass and other members of the entertainment mass, and though there was some overlap between the two factions it was not a loving interaction. And his father was at first a gentle-voiced reader of the radio news and then a presence on the morning-show schmooze, and while it went unwatched he advanced another notch and moved up to the gameshows that were neither fun nor funny and were designed only for money, until one day he reached the mighty post of the nightly news host. And as the daughter of a family of artists, I automatically hated the banalities of the media-world personalities. In the meetings of city scouts from different schools, we would discuss our most treasured artistic jewels, and I, with my withering stare, a favored form of warfare in those rooms of unstirred air, would show no pity when someone said something stupid and someone always said something stupid. And we would go out on hikes but in stormy weather we would stay inside together, presenting works of art that helped impart something of our personal outlook, and I brought in “The Monster Doe,” which is a poem by Yona Wallach, and one of the nicknames given to me by my father, my Moloch. The son of the anchorman brought in a poem by David Avidan, which felt like a sign, and so, while on poetic cloud nine, he took my hand in silence and far from the eyes of the girl and boy scouts he snared me with his gray gaze and with no delays pulled out a long folder and hugged my surprised shoulder and told me that he was an only child, exiled from his family’s love, and that these pictures were portraits of “the only ones who give a shit about me in my family,” and they were a pack of purebred hunting dogs, Weimaraners, silvery and aristocratic, and under that emphatic and ignoble pressure, I agreed, hardly ecstatic, to go to the Cinematheque with him and see
Wild at Heart and suffer the presence of his clasping, mortifying hand throughout that work of art. The movie left an immense impression on me and a filmy layer of fear, as I hoped but did not truly adhere to the belief that one day maybe that sort of tremendous love and passion would be given to me as a once-in-a-lifetime ration, because as the lights went up, I was ashamed of the company I kept, and I felt small and inept, with this boy who went to school with the pasty-cheeked geeks, while I was educated with the artsy freaks, and I looked at him again and gauged the yawning gap between this kid and the wild chap, glamorized before our virginal eyes, and there was, it was clear, a certain vulgarity to the disparity. And when I got out of my seat some woman in the audience did declare, with a triumphant foot on a red-carpeted stair, that I was a dead ringer for the main female lead, and all of the other people did indeed stare, and compare, gauging, in contemplative assessment, my likeness to that slinky actress, as the anchorman’s son, suddenly incandescent, flicked back his pale locks and glowed from the compliment, and yet the warm charm of his arm on my inexperienced shoulder, felt, more and more, like a burn, and the gluey feeling began to churn inside me as I steadfastly ignored him and simpered until one day he ran after me all the way from the Valley of the Cross to the Valley of the Ghosts, and whimpered: “Why won’t you talk to me? Talk to me! Talk to me! Talk to me!” and I fled from him and he pursued me like that for three years, three long years during which I loved the leader of our troop to tears, and he was a year older than us, and always witty and nonplussed, which were the two attributes in which we did trust, and yet, at the same time, he was so assured and effusive, even after his brother died in the sweetest and most elitist of units, and his sister half-starved to the point of becoming elusive, and his mother, it was said, had hung black blinds across all of their windows and beds, while his father fell into a terminal hush, and he himself, the revered group leader, lived on the outskirts of the city, in a bare dorm room, and on account of the brother and the tragedy that did loom, all of his actions were magnified tenfold above those of the others, and once, when a girl vomited in the middle of a scouts meeting, he yelled at her that it was repulsive and what the hell was she doing, but then he changed gears and asked for a few volunteers to get her a glass of water and a clean towel, and he, in a mood no longer foul, apologized profusely as he mopped up her morning muesli and from that moment on we would joke, but with awe, and say that when he barfed he probably unchoked whole items from his stomach like unbroken pitas and uncut tomatoes and that his farts carried the scent of aftershave. But in truth, even though he was the group leader and older than us by a year, he was the saddest kid in the troop by far and easily the most severe, because deep inside he was already an adult, and as a result, just pretended everything was in order, and his ironed uniform shirt and leader’s backpack supported that assertion, but I did not, and for three innocent years I dreamt of us clinging to one another and kissing a completely spiritual kiss, and knowing I would be remiss if I dared to dismiss this spiritual need, I, on the last day of scouts, when all of the patrols came together and sang around the bonfires and burnt impressive letters of fire and flaming symbols of kerosene-soaked burlap and wire, stood off to the side with him, and gazed at it all and knew that this was my cue, because in the coming year he, like his brother, would be drafted, and so I crafted, with the flames on my face, some untapped courage and stood by the fire and said into his ear in an awfully stable voice the words that shan’t be spoken: “I love you.” And he took me by the hand to the promised land of his dorm room, where, amid surroundings so Spartan and spare, he sat me on the narrow bed and made me understand: in a low and hopeless rasp he told me that he loved me too, even a lot, because I am just like him, overly sensitive, but first of all, and this is imperative, I am a minor, and second of all, he could never have a girlfriend because, though he can pretend, he suffers from a lack of emotion, and the notion of a home and kids is something even the imagination forbids, which is precisely how I felt, but then he fell silent and let the words melt, and got up and drove me back to the party, which was going in a spirit quite hearty, in a parentless flat where all the nice cadets danced and sinned with their first legal cigarette, and the anchorman’s son, always attuned to this sort of sensation, promptly surmised the situation, and took me out of the hands of the leader, and I collapsed into his arms, sad, in a white shirt and a green scouts' bandana, that I, lacking the steel and the necessary zeal, failed to choke myself with.
Like goody-two-shoes Jerusalemites we made out in the hallway and the parents’ room and the cozy gloom of the other rooms, all along his largely unoccupied mansion in Upper Motza, where the dogs that were gray were kept at bay in a kennel akin to a canine chalet. And instead of parents or hounds the living room grounds did abound with massive pillows on pale sofas, too soft and too round, and the walls held framed photos of happy-looking residents in poses, and in the fridge there were Tupperware-d rows of food, and countless rooms, large and mostly empty, in which every resident kept: his own phone line and his own shower, his own floor and his own meals, his own emotional and coital life. And his auburn-haired mother with the dye job and the wannabe playful tufts in her hair would leave her lair only when it was time to go shopping and would converge on us after a splurge with stiff designer bags in her hands and place on the bed some item of clothing for the anchorman’s son, who would have to exclaim and feign a deep gratitude of the heart, up until the next time she decided to depart, and it was said that she once got stuck driving home and had to take the bus and gave the stunned driver a credit card, because it was the only form of payment she knew. And his father was rarely seen too because he spent most of his time in the TV’s alternate milieu, which was therefore never turned off, and we, from our loft, would watch the news spoken from his lips and sometimes we would sneak out at night and heat up some pizza or chips and then on rare occasions we would see him, the father, tie-loosened, extending hospitality to some other media personality, a competing newsman or a gorgeous female anchor, emerging from the study at all hours, and one time a nearly elderly and rather plump and vain analyst, with a look of astonishment and a tie full of flowers, stared at my lower levels, which were utterly bared, after we’d shared, the anchorman’s son and I, some dry humping that failed to edify, because I was still virginal and the elderly analyst said through a smile of formality: “What have we here, carnality . . . ?” And we laughed and said that soon Haim Yavin himself would come along and wouldn’t know where the bathroom was because the house was so big and confusing with its four levels and slanted ceilings, and we would joke that when at last I consented and presented him with my virginity, his father, with solemnity, would deliver the news on TV, but even as we shared the same bed for many a month I continued to refuse and he at any rate said he was willing to punt, and would take the blue balls in stride because, as he would readily confide, he was in love with me and only me, and he would take great affront and say that I had offended him, ushering in a real arctic cold front, if I so much as turned my back, and I turned my back on my childhood house and my mother, who went to discover what life was like on the other side of the tracks, while I went off to recover, to start a communal society with my friends of the art-school variety. And he, who had been left in a nearly impersonal way, was mad and cried foul play in the name of my old teddy bear and the rest of the snotty siblings left there. And he would write me piles and piles of letters that were lighter even than the weight of his unrequited love, but I was so cruel and I seemed to love not loving back, because I, like him, felt a bit orphaned and abandoned but didn’t know how to put that in words, and only my body would shoot, as though at migrating birds, arrows that were accusatory and dismissive, challenging, seductive, and misleading, leaving him pleading. And we exchanged yells and strange trembles, suffocating hugs and segmented attraction, none of which ever escalated into fucking, and maybe for that reason we went through a series of breakups and makeups, frustrations, confrontations, and reconciliations, enduring a sordid of fraternity of siblings. And in his last letter he wrote only five words. My first name, my last name, a colon, and a question: “monster or doe?” And I didn’t know, but since then we have not exchanged a word. In hindsight, though, the son was unique and kind especially in light of the fact that he too raised himself by himself.
And all through that year his father played the lead in a series of ads for Bank Leumi and the son and I would drive through the nights, satisfaction-free. We celebrated his new license with glee under the father’s billboard presence, his face caught in the light-splashed glare, as we kissed under his somber and reliable stare. And when the son departed for a pre-army trip, I returned with the father from the bustling airstrip, and in the car, in order to bar the awkwardness from going too far, he put in some old cassette, and with the folk music booming, I began resuming, to my heart’s content, my examination of his features as the road stretched on in endless ascent. His black hair glistened in the refined dashboard glow, his pale face in contrast the color of snow, his broad chest swathed in a neatly ironed red, his breast adorned with a tie the color of lead, festooned with miniature illustrations, decorations I was familiar with from our covert, top-floor explorations. And I watched his large and beautiful hands on the black steering wheel, so similar to those of his son, and I started to feel a certain curiosity, wondering, in my precocity, if he too had a big and wondrously thick cock, which aroused in me a sexual desire that had yet to blaze into a full-fledged fire, and suddenly I wanted to lose my virginity to him, the father, but my thoughts stayed stuck between my ears, which also were unpierced and intact, as steamy desire swirled in a matter hardly abstract, and I continued to stare at the desirable anchorman, wondering what lay beneath his hard and impressive face: and whether it might be softened.
